Proximity
by Efrain Hernandez
Summary: When a passionate ghost hunter named David posts an ad for an assistant he didn't expect for a ballsy college kid to be the first one to respond. What he wanted was just some help but what he got instead was an opportunity of a life time. Please Review!


**Proximity**: (_n_) the state, quality, sense, or fact of being near or next; closeness.

* * *

David parked his van outside the house on 2784 Groom Street and silenced the audio CD playing "_How to contact the inner ghost_". When the speakers went silent he honked his horn twice and waited patiently. David leaned back in his seat and stretched. He turned his torso to the left, then to the right and then finally to the left again before hearing a small pop behind his kidneys. Relief swept through him.

Someone younger than he was, about the age of twenty, appeared out of his front door and waved to him. David smiled and pointed at his watch.

"Tick-tock, Royce." He muttered under his breath.

Royce locked his door and hurried across his front lawn and around the back of the car. He tossed his swollen backpack in the back seat and quickly hopped onto the passenger seat. Two seconds inside and Royce was already feeling claustrophobic. The van was unusual cramped with equipment.

"Ready, amigo?" Royce asked while putting on his seat belt.

"Been ready, friend." David started the car and drove away from the house.

"You look excited."

"I'm ecstatic."

David loved the enthusiasm. The clock on the radio read 6:49pm when he pressed harder on the accelerator.

"Have you ever done this before?" He asked.

Royce shrugged. "Yeah but in a very mediocre/ not serious kind of way."

"But you're serious now, right? We can't do this unless you're serious, Royce."

"Oh yeah, I'm serious." He shot him a thumbs up.

"Good. Now we're going to start off with a sacrifice by slitting a virgin's throat."

Royce stared at him blankly.

"Just kidding; you need to loosen up some. Too much seriousness is a bad thing too. It'll petrify you."

"Sure." Royce sat quietly in his seat and picked his nails, not quite certain how to respond anymore. "So where are we headed to?"

"Oak's Creek. It's relatively unknown to people who don't drive in this neighborhood."

A light bulb went off. "I know that legend. In the early fifties a young girl was riding her bike alongside a railroad track. Somehow the wheel was caught in between the rails and when a train came by-"

"Sightings are uncommon to minimal, but I'm confident we'll get something on record." David got off the street and began driving onto a state highway that had fewer cars. The trees were growing taller and wider as they continued to drive down the highway.

"So tell me David, what got you interested in all of this."

David made a turn onto a dirt path that branched off from the highway. "I've been do this since 2006. My little sister got me into it actually. We went on our first ghost hunt in an abandoned home that fall and came face to face with its…resident."

Royce's jaw dropped. "You saw a ghost?"

"We didn't see anything but I know it in my heart that it was right in front of us. It was during our overnight stay. We sent a message to it and it replied back. We wanted to see it in person and got something even better."

"Which was?"

"Proof."

"Holy cow."

"Not holy. No, it was anything but holy."

"So what's the proof?"

David rolled his sleeve back and revealed two deep cuts that ran down his arm. It touched the corner of his elbow and then bounced back up to his shoulder. "It hurt like hell."

"I bet," Royce was astounded. He eyed the scar in full detail and wondered about the being that did it. "If you didn't see it, how did you know it was there?"

"In front of such evil, you'll know. I could sense the darkness being sucked into a black hole just a few inches in front of us. It was so close I could've held out my arm and felt my skin crawl twice over. After that night my sister never got back into hunting ghosts."

"But you did."

"Sure, I had to. You can even call it a calling of mine," David was now reunited to another street that was a lot smoother to drive on. The trees, however, were growing thicker. Darkness was falling faster there.

"Here it is coming up. Get the camcorder ready," David said in a hurry. He slowed down the van to a yielding 20 miles per hour.

Royce turned around and began rummaging through boxes and crates. "Where's the camcorder?"

"In the bag that says camcorder."

As quickly as he could, Royce pulled in the bag and began setting the camcorder up. He attached it to the dashboard on a custom installed rack that stabilized the camcorder. David stopped in front of a fork in the road. Night had fallen on them already. To the left was a sign that read "_To Highway 09_" while the right read "_To Oak's Creek_." The road to the right was the more obscure of the two. David let out a chest full of air and turned to Royce.

"You got this kid?"

"Yeah, I'm good. Let's do this."

David nodded and drove the van to the right. He switched on his high beams and slowly moved into the street with caution. The camcorder's recording light was on and Royce, being the least experienced, was feeling his chest stretch with every heartbeat. He anxiously watched as they passed branches and vines that hung in tight clusters. Everything else was shrouded in shadows. Any minute now they were going to approach the abandoned railroad that intersected with Oak's Creek. Royce couldn't have been any more excited. Tonight he was going to see his first ghost while the camcorder recorded the entire ride.

(Thanks for reading! Please review for the continuation of the story)


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